Vehicles equipped with an automatic transmission are each provided with a switch called a kick-down switch, which is turned on when an amount of operation of an accelerator pedal is not less than a predetermined amount and turned off when an amount of operation of the accelerator pedal is less than the predetermined amount. When the kick-down switch is turned on in the vehicle equipped with an automatic transmission, the automatic transmission is automatically shifted down to obtain powerful accelerating force.
A technology of applying such kick-down switches to vehicles not equipped with any automatic transmission has been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2007-239504 (PTL 1) discloses a hybrid vehicle which is not equipped with any automatic transmission but provided with a kick-down switch. When the kick-down switch is off, the hybrid vehicle sets an engine's target power to a restricted value obtained by restricting vehicle requested power, which is based on an amount of operation of an accelerator. When the kick-down switch is on, the hybrid vehicle sets the engine's target power to the vehicle requested power as it is. An acceleration feeling requested by a driver can thereby be gained when the kick-down switch switches from off to on.